Upside Down
by Darlingplease
Summary: Chloe lost two lives that night. Alek doesn't mind picking up her pieces. But when another Mai comes to take Valentina's place and changes up all the rules, can their blossoming relationship survive? Will they fight for each other? Post Ep. 10, Chalek.
1. Alley Cat

"_So wash your paws now alley cat,_

_Once you're dead you can't come back,_

_So meow, meow, meow, enchante-moi."_

Paper Kitten Nightmare-Margot and the Nuclear So and So's

**UPSIDE DOWN**

This was all her fault.

Eyes glassy, Chloe stared at her two best friends. Her two wonderful, vulnerable, incredibly human friends. Her legs had gone numb from Brian's weight, but she didn't move him. This was her fault. His _death_ was her burden to bear.

Why hadn't she just listened to Jasmine and Alek? Why couldn't she have just done as Valentina had asked, just this one time? And the cost of her stubborn streak was yet again the life of a human—the life of a friend. Someone that she had loved. Someone that had trusted her.

Where were her Mai protectors now? Where was Jasmine? Had she really hurt Alek so badly that he no longer cared whether she lost a life, or two, or eight? Chloe chided herself for that thought. Something was obviously wrong. Alek would never do that to her; he would never abandon her to the Order no matter how mad he was at her.

Chloe looked at Amy helplessly.

"Oh my God, Chloe! We have to get Brian to a hospital," Amy cried. The look on her face held all the shock and horror that Chloe didn't yet know how to express.

"No!" Chloe snapped at her friend, a little more harshly than she had planned. "Didn't you hear me? He's dead. I killed him."

Amy gaped at her. "Then we have to get you to a hospital! Look at you—" Amy's voice cracked and Chloe could make out a sheen of tears building in her friend's eyes. She glanced at Paul, who placed a comforting arm around her shoulders, and the girl's face crumpled with emotion.

"Amy." Chloe's voice softened at the sight of her friend in tears. She looked down at herself. She was covered in blood and her shirt was tattered. "I look like Swiss cheese. Don't you think the doctors will ask questions about how I survived three bullet wounds? I'm fine. Don't worry about me. I've got plenty of lives left!" she joked, trying to lighten the mood. She didn't have it in her, though.

How could she lighten the mood with a dead body in her lap?

"What should we do?" Paul asked. This was the most somber Chloe thought she had ever seen him.

"Have you heard from Alek or Jasmine?" she asked.

"Not since earlier today," said Paul.

"Jasmine didn't pick up her phone," Amy added.

Chloe nodded, feeling any leftover dregs of hope slip from her mind. It had been a set up. It had never been her father sending her those emails or texts. How could she have been so foolish, so reckless? Her father was long gone. He was dead. He wasn't coming back, not now or ever.

Everything she thought she had been doing right had been so very, very wrong. Now her world had been turned upside down.

"Go home, guys." She cradled Brian's body closer to her chest. "I just want to be alone right now."

"But, Chloe—" Amy and Paul both stuttered.

She stared into the distance, at the glass-encased figure of a cable car, refusing to meet their stunned eyes. She hardly felt the warmth of tears slipping down her cold cheeks. "Please," she whispered. "Please."

_!_

God bless Paul and the sway he held over Amy, or else Chloe would have never been able to get her to leave.

She hadn't known what to do with Brian. She couldn't just leave him there. How awful that would have been; how disrespectful to her friend. But she also couldn't carry him around, not in her current state. It was all she could do to limp around under her own weight, let alone his too.

And really, what would she look like running around, covered in blood, with an unmoving body thrown over her shoulder? Like an escapee from the nuthouse, that's what. So in the end, she left Brian—she couldn't bring herself to think of that cold, unmoving mass as Brian's body yet—and made a shaky, sniffling call to the police from a payphone.

Then she took to the alleys and rooftops, phone against her ear and Alek's name ready on the tip of her tongue. She called his phone again and again. Damn him! Why wouldn't he answer? What the hell was going on tonight?

Chloe snuck through the lobby of the hotel Valentina stayed in, keeping her head low and arms crossed over her chest as she tried to ignore the strange looks she got. She huddled into the corner of the elevator that would take her up to the penthouse, desperately hoping that the person across from her was as oblivious as she thought they were and wouldn't turn to see what that dripping noise was—her blood hitting the otherwise immaculate floor.

She cringed at the mess she had made as she stepped off the elevator. A place as snazzy as this would definitely have cameras. Maybe she could just pass the bloody footprints off as feminine issues. Who was she kidding? She didn't know whether the truth or a lie would mortify her more.

Chloe rushed across the hall and into Valentina's penthouse room. Dizzily, she crashed through the heavy door. It was unlocked. Weird.

"Alek!" she called out, but the condition of the room halted his name on her lips.

Tables and chairs were thrown across the room. Pottery had been shattered and spread across the floor. Blinds had fallen to the floor, covering glittering shards of broken glass. The penthouse had been massacred, but there was no one to be found. What had happened here?

The sight of a bloody handprint on the floor made her already weak stomach churn. Had she lost nearly everyone she cared for? Was this her punishment for being so naïve? They would never stop. The Order would never stop until she and everyone she loved was dead. Being Mai wasn't a gift; it was a curse, and an awful one, at that.

Shakily, Chloe leaned against a wall, peering into the doorway of a bedroom. She felt lost, helpless, sick. What could she do? If this assassin had taken out Jasmine, Alek and Valentina in one shot, what chance did she have? But then, she had to try. She couldn't afford to think like that. There was no way she could just give up and comply. If she was going to be taken, she definitely wasn't going without a fight.

"Hello?" she called quietly.

There was a shuffle behind her, and Chloe turned. She stared up confusedly at the person facing her.

"Zane?" she asked. Jasmine's boyfriend?

"Hello," he answered softly.

No. Freaking. Way.

Chloe's first instinct was to lash out. Her claws extended of their own volition and she swiped at Zane's face, leaving three bloody gashes across his temple and cheek. She slammed her knee into his crotch, ignoring the white hot pain of her bullet wounds, and he doubled over.

Zane came back with a vengeance. He smacked her across the face, stunning her. Her teeth clattered together and the sharp clap of flesh connecting with flesh echoed through her head. He picked her up like she was nothing but a rag doll and threw her across the hall and into the kitchen. She hit the drawers and cabinets and collapsed. It took barely a moment for him to reach her, filling his hand with her hair and pulling her up. She cried out.

She clawed at him, thrashing and kicking and fighting as best she could. But she was weakened already, and she knew the beating was a shameful one. He pushed her against the wall, holding her there with his heavy body and one hand squeezing the air from her throat. He squashed her cheek flush against the cabinet, so hard that it was painful. His nose tickled her earlobe, his breathing harsh but even against her ear, followed by his lips.

"I'll kill you a hundred times over just to make sure you don't come back," he told her.

The sharp pain in Chloe's midsection brought chill bumps to her skin. The smell of blood in the room was overwhelming. Pain blossomed anew in her torso. Really? She was about to do this again?

"But…why…," she choked breathily. "Jasmine?"

"I killed Jasmine. Like I killed Valentina," he told her coldly. No remorse. No vestiges of compassion for someone he claimed to care about. It made Chloe sick to her stomach.

She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for what she knew was coming.

"And Alek," he finished with a smile. He pressed the blade into her gut a second time, deeply, slowly. Almost sensually, like it got him off. He disgusted her. She wanted to tell him, but words failed her in the face of her agony.

The pain couldn't possibly have measured up to the pain she felt in her heart at his words, though.

"Why, Chloe, you look pale. Are you all right?" he taunted her.

She responded with a strangled grunt. She was dying. Again.

Tears stung her eyes, but Chloe refused to let them fall. She refused to let Zane see what he had done to her, see that he was breaking her down, piece by miserable piece. Suddenly she didn't care anymore whether she lived or died. What was the point of being the Uniter if there was no one left to unite? She didn't want anyone else to die for her, because of her. She felt her mind shutting down, her body beginning to become slow and unresponsive for the second time that night.

"How could you?" she sighed, knowing he would hear her. His heartbeat was erratic; excited.

Zane simply laughed. "You deserve this," he spat at her.

"Get the hell off of her!"

Zane was wrenched away. Chloe gasped, whimpering at the sudden absence of the blade that had been lodged in her gut. The knife clattered to the floor, stained with her blood. She sunk down, leaning her head against the fridge. It was so cool, and she was scalding.

She watched as Zane was spun around and Alek held him by a fistful of his shirt. Alek landed a vicious punch to his temple, then another to his jaw and another to his gut, until both knuckles and face were bleeding. He tossed Zane's motionless body against the sink where he crumpled, unconscious.

Sleepy, she closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again Alek was calling her name, over and over again. Chloe, Chloe, Chloe. He was shaking her gently, sometimes rubbing her neck. His fingers ran across her cheek, his lips whispered against her forehead.

"You're alive," she stated with a smile. She couldn't see him. Her vision had gone dark.

He sighed with relief. "Thank God, so are you."

"Tonight's not my lucky night," she quipped lightly, shaking loose a wet cough. Her lungs were filling with blood. Soon they would heal, after she died.

"Don't talk," he urged. "You're going into shock."

Vaguely, she felt him pull her into his arms, tight against his chest. There was pressure on her abdomen. Her cheek was pressed against his bare skin; he had taken his shirt off and was using it to stave the blood flow, she realized. Too late for that.

"Stay with me, you stubborn girl," Alek growled, anger and adrenaline seeming to eat up his sorrow. "I cannot lose you too."

"Alek," she whispered, softly, so softly. "I'm dying."

His voice came no more. Her breath came no more. She heard a door close, a voice yell. And then, silence.


	2. Breakable

"_We are so fragile, our cracking bones make noise_

_We are just breakable, breakable, breakable_

_Girls and boys."_

_ -Breakable, Ingrid Michaelson_

**UPSIDE DOWN**

Alek had killed people and he had seen people die. He had seen the deaths of people that he hated, people that he couldn't care less about, and sometimes people that he loved. Worst of all, Alek had killed people that he loved. Maybe he hadn't killed them physically and maybe he hadn't done it by his own hand, but it was his fault.

Worst of the worst was Chloe's death.

He was covered in her blood, simply drenched. His dark wash jeans stuck to his legs, the blood that had begun pooling beneath his lap staining them. He pressed his black shirt tight against her stomach but still the puddle seemed to grow. The overwhelming smell of copper and iron made him feel sick.

"Chloe?" he asked.

Her heart had stopped beating exactly 27 seconds ago. It was silly of him to think that she might reply. Even now, the bruises on her neck—perfect outlines of Zane's hands—had already begun to disappear.

She seemed to be distinctly staring at him. The thought sent a round of chills across his neck and arms. For all intents and purposes, Chloe was…dead. Her eyes which usually shone with such passion, such life and flare, seemed gray now. He could find no light there, but still he stared back into them, searching and hoping for that moment that the spark of her life once again ignited.

What if they had been wrong all along? What if she had been mistaken about being pushed off of the tower, or it had been some freak accident? What if Chloe wasn't the Uniter, and what if she was gone for good? Alek couldn't bear the thought. He couldn't abide the thought of a world where he wasn't on her rooftop every night and she wasn't safe in bed, prattling on to Amy about some asinine gibberish.

Chloe had been dead for 45 seconds now. Alek's chest burned with something akin to panic.

She was gray, pale and colorless, and somehow heavy—or perhaps that was the weight of her death on his shoulders. He should have been there. For all of them, Valentina and Jasmine as well. He had been too busy brooding. He had let his personal life get in the way of his duty. Jasmine had warned him against this, and he should have listened.

Now Valentina was dead. He could hear Jasmine's heartbeat in the other room, faint but steady. Before Chloe had arrived, thinking that he had tapped Zane out, he contacted some Mai healers—where were the blasted idiots, anyways?—and moved his aunt and cousin into the other room. That prick had recovered and knocked him in the head with a piece of wooden shelf, and would've killed him had Chloe not interrupted.

He heard the healers before he saw them. They weren't even in the door before he started telling them off.

"Have a peaceful stroll over here, did you?" he yelled, pointing them in the direction of the bedroom. "Valentina is dead, poisoned. Jasmine's been stabbed. Help her, _now_."

The two healers gaped at him for a moment, stared at the dead Uniter in his arms, but hung their heads and rushed in to heal Jasmine. _Yes_, he wanted to tell them, _the great and mighty Valentina is dead and it's all my fault._

Chloe's heart gave a magnificent thump. Her body jerked forward as she gasped in a lungful of air. Color returned to her gray cheeks. She shook, perhaps from cold or adrenaline.

"Chloe," he said, holding her tighter as she flailed and searched for oxygen. He stared fiercely into her eyes. He had to know she was alive, that she was okay. "It's all right. I've got you, I've got you."

As they silently clung to each other, Alek noticed that something was missing from the kitchen.

Zane. He was gone.

_!_

After a shower and change of clothes, Alek had delivered Chloe back to her bedroom. It had been a slow commute, with her healing wounds. It had also been somber.

Valentina was dead. Brian was dead. Jasmine was in critical condition. She only had six lives left. And Alek seemed just as accepting of the silence as Chloe was. She didn't tell him about Brian. She couldn't bear it. It would just hurt both of them even more.

Alek had left her to check up on Jasmine, promising to not be gone longer than a few minutes.

So Chloe did the only thing she could think to do. She grabbed a tub of ice cream and a spoon from the kitchen and curled around it in bed. She didn't bother to call Amy or Paul even though she knew they would be chomping at the bit now to hear from her. She didn't even check her phone, knowing that her two friends would have blown it up by now. _Tomorrow_, she told herself, _I'll handle it tomorrow_.

She had to be strong, now more than ever. She couldn't afford to break down. Zane and the Order would come back for her, and she had to be ready when they did.

But, damn it, she was only sixteen! Instead of worrying about what she was going to wear to prom, she was busy worrying about when the next attempt on her life would be, or when the next assassin would try to massacre her friends and family.

She heard when Alek returned and thought that he might come in to give her an update. It wasn't a moment later that Chloe's mom returned from work. She listened as the car door slammed, heard the rustle of clothes and bags, and heard the front door shut. Keys landed on the table. Heels clacked against the floor.

Chloe's heard thumped harder. It would seem weird to her mom that she hadn't been there to welcome her home, and she would come check on her, inevitably finding Chloe in bed at nine o'clock with an empty tub of Moose Tracks. Red flag smorgasbord.

"Chloe, honey?" her mom called as she made her way up the stairs.

Her head popped through the door.

"Hey," she answered, smiling faintly.

Meredith's happy face faltered, falling completely away in an instant. "You're pale, sweetheart. Is everything okay?" she asked, coming across the room to place a hand against Chloe's forehead.

Chloe stared at her mom, not knowing what to say or how, just knowing that something _would_ be said because her mother always coaxed the truth out of her somehow.

Chloe looked down, fiddling with the spoon and making swirls in the half melted ice cream. "No," she answered after a moment, voice shaking with emotion. She could feel her eyes burning, her chest tightening.

Meredith placed an arm around her daughter. "Chloe?" she asked. "Chloe, what's wrong? You can talk to me."

"I know," she answered, sniffling and shaking her head to ward off the tears. "I just… It's hard."

Meredith nodded. Chloe stayed silent, feeling her mom's eyes boring into her face and urging her to speak. She let out a sort of laugh, but it was constricted with worry and wasn't very happy at all. "You're scaring me a little. You aren't pregnant, are you?" she asked.

"Mom!" Chloe chided, glaring at her beyond wet eyelashes.

"As a parent, I'm obligated to ask!" she said, holding her hands up.

Chloe gulped. Saying the words would make it so real. She felt that saying it out loud might break her; that the words might come to life and wrap themselves around her neck and choke her to death. But then she'd just have to endure their constant company through five more lives.

The image of Brian laying there in her lap—cold, hard, empty—filled her head again. He used to make her laugh. They used to get coffee together. He used to wear kitty hats and walk and talk and breathe and be someone's son. She had taken that away from him.

Zane had been right. She deserved whatever she got. And for all the deaths she had caused, she certainly deserved nine of her own.

"Brian is dead." The words were out there now. They were solid, like a wooden beam that she might use to hang herself from. She gulped noisily, throat dry.

From the rooftop, she heard Alek's heart leap like a frightened cat. The shingles creaked beneath his tense form. He was caught off guard, itching to for her mother to leave so that he could get to her. For what, she didn't know. To scold her, maybe? Tell her that he told her so? Maybe to demand why she hadn't said something before?

The tears she had been holding for hours burst out of her. Embarrassed, she covered her face with her hands. She never cried like this.

Her mom pulled Chloe into her arms, running her hands over Chloe's frizzy hair. "Oh, no," she groaned. "Oh, kiddo."

She cried loudly against her mother's shoulder. "Do you know…how?" Meredith asked.

"I think it's my fault," she blurted choppily, breath catching in her throat between sniffles and sobs. But she couldn't very well tell her mom about being a Mai and her kiss being deadly to humans. The woman would lose her marbles.

Chloe was painfully aware of Alek's presence above her. His heart was a steady beat, like a soundtrack to her sadness.

"What?" her mom asked, disbelief coloring the word. "Did you do something? Say something?"

"No," Chloe sputtered. "I just… I don't know. I don't know anymore."

What a mess.

"I'm calling in tomorrow and staying home with you," Meredith told her.

"No!" Chloe snapped, maybe a little too fast. "I'm fine. I've got to figure this out on my own. Just like everything else. You aren't going to be around forever, Mom."

"You sure, kiddo?" She asked, pushing a strand of wet hair behind Chloe's ear. "It's not a problem at all, if that's what you're worried about."

"I'm fine. I promise," she asserted. "Life goes on. For all of us. I just don't really want to talk about this anymore. With _anyone_."

_!_

Sleep was, of course, a non-factor.

Zane had escaped. She heard his chilling laughter in the wind that whistled through her window. She saw his shadow sweep across the carpet. Things seemed to move in the reflection of her closet door. Creaks from downstairs kept her from fitful sleep.

And dreams of the dead kept her from peaceful sleep.

She could see Brian, alive, so clearly in them. He seemed alive again, like it was just reality that was the nightmare. And when she wrenched herself awake it was like she lost him all over again.

It took a lot to make Chloe cry. It just seemed like these days it was all she ever did. Cry and worry and get herself into trouble.

And horrifyingly, in this moment crying felt great.

The clock told her it was one in the morning. Her brain told her she wasn't going to be getting to sleep anytime soon.

Compelled by the ache in her chest, Chloe let it all out. She covered her head with the comforter, even if it was stuffy and lacked fresh air. She curled up and sobbed quietly beneath it, hidden away from the world in her little bubble of denial.

She was as quiet as she ever had been. The springs in her bed squeaked and tensed under her quivering body. She wiped at her runny nose. Her face was flooded, way beyond help from the back of her hand. She didn't even know what exactly it was she was crying about anymore. Anything. Everything.

"Chloe," whispered a voice.

She breathed in, startled. He was right beside her bed. No one was quite as soundless as Alek. He knew all of the spots in her house that creaked.

"Alek," she croaked, voice muffled by the covers.

He breathed out, a heavy, weighted sigh. She felt him sit at the foot of her bed. She pushed the blanket back, fixing him with her gaze. She knew she probably looked awful. Her eyes and nose were red from crying, her face probably shone in the moonlight from the tears she hadn't bothered to wipe away.

Alek looked bothered, haunted even. Not a muscle in his face moved, but it was his eyes… She couldn't place the stony look.

Chloe propped herself up to look at him.

Alek reached over and brushed away a tear that had escaped from the corner of her eye. "You didn't tell me," he said gently.

"I didn't know how," she told him, shrugging.

Alek's mouth opened and closed, like he didn't want to ask the question. "What happened?"

"I died tonight," she said. He nodded knowingly at her. She continued carefully, "I mean, before Zane killed me, I died."

A muscle in Alek's jaw strained and he slid his eyes closed. His mouth opened a few times before he just shook his head. "Twice?" he grated. He scoffed. "Twice."

How could he tell her that while she was being murdered, he had been on a ledge somewhere pondering their relationship? Well, they couldn't have a relationship if she was too expired to reciprocate his feelings, could they?

"I'm sorry," she told him sincerely, avoiding his gaze.

He lifted her chin up to look at him. "It is _not_ your fault, Chloe."

She looked away again. She told Alek about the false meeting with her dad and being shot. "When I came back to life again, Brian…he had…he was…" She stared blankly into the darkness of her unlit bathroom. She jumped when Alek softly spoke her name. "He kissed me. And it was too late. I held him while he died, Alek. I was there when his lungs paralyzed, and I listened as he suffocated. And I heard it when his heart stopped."

Chloe looked down, feeling as though she might throw up.

Alek wanted to tell her that he knew exactly what that was like. He had done the same for her, after all. He swallowed hard.

Chloe's lip quivered. "It was awful," she whispered, her voice breaking.

Alek watched as her face crumpled. There were few things in life that he was absolutely sure of, and one of them was that seeing Chloe King cry like this was nearly impossible for him to endure. He had always hated it when women cried. But for someone as strong and durable as Chloe, someone he cared so much about, he couldn't bear it.

He scooted farther onto the bed, lying back against the wall. His legs filled up the whole measly length of the bed. He tugged on Chloe's arm and she didn't resist. Her face rested against his chest, her arm draped across his waist. His was curled around her shoulders and back, rubbing soft circles into the skin of her side.

"It's not your fault, Chloe," he told her softly. "You didn't cause this, and I know that you certainly didn't wish for it to happen. You love who you love."

He couldn't help the bitterness that crept into his voice.

"Please," she whispered. "Don't. You can't love dead people."

Alek shrugged. "You can, but where would it get you? I mean, technically, you're a zombie, you know."

Chloe laughed a little into his chest, smacking him on the stomach lightly. Then the words sunk in. Had Alek kind of, sort of, halfway admitted to loving her? She couldn't even comprehend that right now.

She sighed into his chest. He was so warm, and he smelled really great. She held him tighter. He really was her rock, her go to guy.

"Chloe," Alek began slowly. "I can't tell you what it was like to watch you die like that. When I saw Zane with you…I couldn't even control myself. I was covered in your blood." He turned to look her in the eye. "I can't ever watch you die like that again, Chloe. Not ever."

This was all sounding very familiar to her. She hadn't realized that Alek had gone through almost the exact same thing she had, except it had been her that died instead of Brian.

She nodded against him.

He started to pull away. "I better get back up there," he told her.

Chloe didn't move to stop him. Instead, she said, "Don't go."

And how could he resist that?

So Alek stayed.


	3. Away From This

"_Oh, one day you will go away from this  
>Oh, one day you will know we're men of snow, we melt one day<br>And winters come, and my love, the winters go  
>And time stacks up in piles like winter snow<br>And everything you love and hold so dear  
>Won't really matter when we disappear."<em>

-Men of Snow, Ingrid Michaelson

**UPSIDE DOWN**

"Chloe," Brian choked. "Chloe, help."

They were sitting across from each other at the coffee shop. Brian's cup had toppled over, staining the white table cloth. The spoon he had been using to stir his coffee clattered to the ground. His face was red from exertion; Brian was choking.

Chloe stared at him. Her limbs were too heavy, too slow to reach him and help. _Get up_, she told her body, but not a single part of her seemed to respond. _Move_, she begged, _please move._

She glanced around at the army of faceless, nameless people surrounding them. Each continued to shop, to eat, to laugh and talk. Their lives went on as normal, none of them seeming to notice or care about the choking man.

Finally, she could just make out Paul and Amy across the street.

"Help!" Chloe cried. "He's choking. Please, help! Amy! Paul!"

The couple glanced at her, exchanging troubled looks.

"Do you know her?" Paul asked Amy.

Amy shook her head. "How does she know our names?"

The two hurriedly walked away, and Chloe gaped after them. Adequate words couldn't reach her brain. How could her two best friends not recognize her? Why was this happening? What kind of awful place was this where no one cared if a man died or not—where no one bothered to help?

She turned back to Brian. His time was up. She had waited too long. She could see her reflection in his empty, glassy eyes. He was leaning back in the café chair, staring into her horrified face.

"How could you let me die, Chloe?"

_!_

Chloe shook herself awake, gasping for breath. Her heart was doing back flips in her chest, thundering out an uneven rhythm. Angry for getting so emotional, she wiped furiously at the drying tears on her cheeks.

Dead people didn't talk. Dead people didn't send messages from the grave, and dead people certainly didn't blame the living for their deaths because they were _dead_. They didn't breath or move or do anything. They decayed; they left cookie cutter holes in people's hearts and that was it.

It was surreal to her that someone who had been so full of life and charm just two days ago was now in a morgue and soon to be in a wooden box with worms crawling through his body. Soon that face that her eyes had become so accustomed to seeing would be nothing but bones. Nonexistent. Only pictures would be left of him.

Excuse her for being a bit morbid.

The ear buds of her iPod buzzed away busily under her pillow. She had awoken in the early hours of the morning to find Alek gone. Anxious, she'd lulled herself back into sleep with some music. Now Chloe pushed the iPod off of her bed without even bothering to shut it off. It hit the floor with a thump, still thrumming out some song.

Morning light shone through the window. Her alarm hadn't gone off and neither had her mother awoken her. Weird.

She could hear that the house was empty. Her mother had ended up going to work after all. She was a bit relieved. She loved her mother to death but she couldn't seem to turn her thoughts off, and the last thing she wanted was to actually give her gloominess a voice.

The house was quiet. Water dripped from a faucet. The dryer churned downstairs. Birds sang outside. The air cut on.

Everything that she had enjoyed, every sound and silence that she had cherished before, now the house just sounded lonely to her. Empty, lonely, lifeless. A shell.

Oh, wait. That was her right now. She really needed to snap out of this gloom and doom. It really wasn't like her.

She pulled a pillow over her head, hiding her sensitive ears from the world. The more she thought about it—about what happened—the less real it felt.

_Brian is dead. I will never see Brian again._

The words didn't even make sense. It didn't even sound real. That night already seemed so far away, as though it were a story told to her by someone else—that unfortunate dying boy that kept gasping her name, clawing at her face and at his own breathless throat as she begged for him to be okay.

What would Brian's funeral be like, she wondered? It would be black, that's what it would be like. Would she go?

Chloe's phone buzzed. She sighed and grabbed it from her bedside table.

27 missed calls. 32 text messages.

She wondered how it was that her phone hadn't _literally_ blown up.

Her most recent text read, **Where R U? R U OK? I'm freaking out.** From Amy.

She looked through her call log. Amy, Amy, Amy, Amy, Paul, Mom, Amy. Chloe rolled her eyes. She typed out a message to her friend, who must have been beyond frantic. She was probably frothing at the mouth at this point.

**I'm alive**, it simply read.

It hadn't been five seconds before she received her reply. Amy's message said, **OMG, I'm skipping class & coming over.**

Oh, joy, because reliving the experience was exactly what Chloe wanted. Oh, well. She had let herself sink into a funk and maybe her best friend was just what the doctor ordered when it came to crawling out of it.

Chloe thumbed through her other messages. Most were from her friends and mom, but there was just one from Alek. He had sent it that morning. **Jasmine is awake**, it read. **Call me when you're up and about.**

**P.S. You make very zombie-like noises in your sleep. I am beginning to fear for my brains.**

Chloe smiled and rolled her eyes.

_!_

Amy stared at Chloe, taking in her unwashed hair, the tub of empty ice cream at her bedside, and her red rimmed eyes.

"Okay," she began tentatively, "spill."

Chloe begrudgingly told her friend everything that happened after she made them leave her with Brian's body. She shared some of her darker thoughts with her friend, but kept most to herself. She didn't want to worry Amy unnecessarily. Chloe knew that some of her thoughts, though harmless, were…out of line.

"I can't stop dreaming about him," Chloe told Amy, who looked at her with sympathetic blue eyes. She always did have the most animated eyes. "These awful dreams where he's dying and I can't do anything."

Amy rested her head against Chloe's shoulder. "Chloe," she started, "this isn't your fault."

Boy, did that sound familiar.

"I think psychologically you're feeling some guilt about Brian's…um…Brian's…"

"…death?" Chloe stated blatantly.

Amy nodded sadly. "And I want you to know that _nobody_ blames you. You told him that you guys couldn't be together, and he didn't listen. He was kind of—"

"Don't say he was asking for it," Chloe interrupted, giving Amy a sideways glance.

Amy frowned at her. "Who are you?" she asked. The question shocked Chloe, hit a little too close to home after last night's dream. "Where's your spunk, girl? The Chloe I know has gumption! We've gotta get that back! I know you're sad, Chloe, we all are. I just want you to be okay."

Chloe groaned, toppling over onto her side. "Okay, okay." She grinned at her friend. Enough of this mopey, dreary attitude. So something bad had happened. Bad things happened to people every day. But you know what?

_People got over them._ They picked up and moved on with their lives. And damned if Chloe was going to let her murdering her first love ruin her day!

Sarcasm aside, she knew that was how it had to be.

"In other news," Amy blathered happily, "there was this new girl at school today. She was really weird."

_!_

And so, Chloe's bad day turned into an even worse day.

She had gone to see how Jasmine was without returning Alek's call. That was her first mistake. She should have known that a million things would have changed by the time she was "up and about," as he had put it.

Her second mistake, upon walking into the now polished penthouse and seeing a young woman lounging on the couch, was for her immediate thought to be that this girl was obviously here for Alek. What else could she be there for, glancing around and looking rather lost and stupid as she was? Chloe thought that they were making headway. Showed how well she knew Alek.

Chloe greeted the girl, then pretty much fled to Jasmine's room before she had to actually make conversation with her.

"Jasmine," Chloe called breathlessly.

Alek stood beside Jasmine's bed. "Chloe," he said quietly, genuinely surprised. He watched her as she crossed the room.

"You have no idea how happy I am that you're okay," Chloe told her.

Jasmine smiled at her. Chloe was so grateful for that smile. "I'll be fine by tomorrow. You know, super Mai healing powers and all."

Chloe felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. One less thing to worry about. Finally she could take a breath.

She wanted to ask Jasmine how she was doing. Losing her mother had to have been hard on her, no matter their relationship. But she didn't. She didn't want to bring up dead people, not yet. They could talk about that when Jasmine was well again.

"She's been sleeping most of the time," Alek added, gazing down at his cousin with something akin to admiration. "Have you met Chella yet?"

"I, um…no," Chloe stuttered. She made her way into the other room with Alek, giving Jasmine an apologetic look. The older Mai waved her away, the smile still on her face. She was so strong. Chloe wished she could be so strong.

Chloe hadn't gotten through the doorway before a hand popped out of nowhere. "_I'm_ Chella," said a voice. "Sorry, didn't mean to eavesdrop."

Chloe smiled at the girl. "I'm sure," she said pleasantly. "Kind of comes with the territory, right?"

Chella laughed girlishly. "So it does."

Chloe stared at her outstretched hand. It was boney and held at the wrong angle, like Chella wanted her to kiss it instead of shake it. Chloe took her hand anyways. The girl was around her age. She was pretty, with perfectly sculpted eyebrows, perfectly executed smoky eyes, French manicured nails and unsmudged red lipstick. How could someone wear red lipstick and not get it all over their teeth, Chloe wondered?

"I've heard so much about you," she said, pushing her tawny hair behind her ear. "I can't believe I'm finally meeting the Uniter."

Chloe laughed stiffly. "The one and only." She shrugged.

"I can't wait for you to meet my dad. His plane just landed," Chella told her.

She stared at the girl, confused. "Your dad?" Chloe had just assumed that this girl was visiting for some reason or another. After the incident with her last two visitors…

Chella's perfectly painted smile faltered. "Hasn't Alek told you?"

Something about the way she said Alek's name bugged Chloe. Alek watched her from where he leaned against the doorframe.

Chella smiled brightly and clapped her hands with excitement. "My dad is your new pride leader. We're moving in!"


End file.
